Happy July Fourth!

Two NER missions are close to completion

Only two quests left in the Bip-part-two mission and the quests in the mission on pilocarpine-and-hypotonia only require submissions from two more Mark2Curators each. If you have some spare time and have unlocked the NER tasks, please consider contributing to these missions so that they can be closed out and analyzed.

Cochrane Crowd launches the PICO task

It's no secret, many Mark2Curators enjoy learning and have quickly built their biomedical knowledge arsenal just by reading. In Mark2Cure our contributors help to identify gene, treatment, and disease concepts in the text as well as how these concepts are related. These tasks can quickly become redundant even if the content of the abstracts can change wildly from abstract to abstract. Because Cochrane Crowd also works on biomedical literature, we've teamed up with Cochrane Crowd in the past and expect to do so in the future. In Cochrane Crowd, participants helped identify randomized controlled trials, but Cochrane Crowd has launched another biomedical literature task known as PICO--and this task has many similarities with what Mark2Curators have learned to do. PICO task participants will be actually be extracting information on Populations, Interventions, Comparators, and Outcomes from abstracts. Learn more about the PICO task.

Dazzle4Rare 2018 will happen the week of August 12th-18th.

"In 2016, an idea was born: to spread cross-community rare disease awareness via Twitter and other social platforms. It began in earnest but quickly gained momentum. With the summer approaching, it's time to take the #dazzle4rare mission to a larger audience here on Facebook and other platforms. We have been reaching out and asking for help to make this year's week-long online bigger than before and to connect people across various rare disease and undiagnosed populations. "

For us, #Dazzle4Rare is an opportunity to raise awareness about the the rare diseases that affect the selfless volunteers who make up the Mark2Cure community. To this end, we invite our contributors to tell us about the rare diseases they would like us to highlight during this event. We would be most honored to share your story on our blog or link your site or videos during #Dazzle4Rare. Learn more about #Dazzle4Rare or how to get involved here.

Call for Proposals now Open for #CitSci2019

If you have a professional interest in delving further into the practice of citizen science, consider submitting an abstract or proposal for the 2019 Citizen Science Association Conference. If you live in or near Raleigh, North Carolina, keep this conference in on your radar as there will be a public festival which will include various citizen science projects that you can get involved with.